The three-year Tencent is assisting ecommerce upstart recruited Importers who set up a store on their marketplace display a message on their website. The company has been known for offering cheap, sometimes counterfeit goods that originally targeted users from the less affluent parts of China, but increasingly attracting more price-conscious city dwellers. His rise is closely linked to Tencent's popular WeChat messenger, which he can use to play with viral marketing programs such as Group Deals, a level of access inaccessible, for example, to Tencent rival Alibaba. In addition, the app's focus on direct sales between manufacturers and consumers helps keep costs down.

Pinduoduo's social group buying model works so well that it quickly approaches its big competitors. By the end of September, 232 million active users had been registered. This represents only a fraction of Alibaba's 700 million customer base, but the newcomer is growing more than 200 percent year-on-year. According to data analyst firm Jiguang, Pinduoduo has already darkened JD.com in terms of market penetration. Last year, Pinduoduo was installed on 27.4 percent of all mobile devices in China, ahead of JD.com (23.9 percent) and 52.5 percent behind Alibaba (Taobao).

And now Pinduoduo is getting used to China's booming cross business The desire of people for imported, higher-value goods is increasing with their rising disposable income. This new demand leads to a prolific supply of "Daigou" or buyers who send goods from overseas to Chinese buyers, and inspires e-commerce operators such as Alibaba and JD.com to start their own cross-border business. The lucrative sector, which market researcher iiMedia initiated last year with 9 trillion yuan ($ 1

.34 trillion) in transactions, has even attracted unexpected players such as NetEase. The Hangzhou-based company is best known as one of China's leading game manufacturers, but it has suffered from cross-border shopping in recent years with the Kaola service, which purportedly buys the Amazon China import unit. TechCrunch already has it. He contacted Pinduoduo for more information on his overseas shopping and will update the story when we hear it. What we know for sure is that over the next three years, the e-commerce site will take over 500,000 small and medium-sized resellers for its overseas channel, Li Yuan's vice president announced at a November event. Pinduoduo has already delivered imported goods to customers, a business that has grown gradually over the past year. Consumers in the countryside have never been more willing to shop online, as Beijing is making great efforts in these regions to boost digital payments.

Pinduoduo has not made a profit yet, and the cost of fighting Alibaba and JD.com has risen All the more so, as announced just six months after the $ 1.63 billion IPO in the US As a $ 1 billion deal, Time will tell if cross-border e-commerce – which replicates its direct sales model – will help it make a profit.